1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to creating custom designs comprising physical enhancements, graphical enhancements as would be complimentary to the physical enhancements, and images manifest on sheet materials.
2. Prior Art
Embossed and die cut areas serve as decorative features on greeting cards, menus, business cards, decorative surrounds and the like. Areas of physical enhancement are arranged to accentuate specific graphical features on a design such as a raised area coinciding with a textual greeting. Tooling used to impart physical enhancements is custom to the printed image. Developing tooling for one off or small production volumes is prohibitively expensive using traditional methods.
Die cut and embossing devices and systems, and libraries of dies, are available from companies such as Ellison, ProvoCraft and Sizzix. These emboss and die cut regions on sheet materials for one-off and small production volume designs. Die cut dies primarily cut shapes from sheet material that are then affixed to other sheet material. Embossing dies impart raised areas or textures to areas of a sheet material. Such die cut and embossing devices and systems offer no integral facility or systemic approach to coordinating areas of graphical enhancements and areas of physical enhancements on a sheet material. Executing a design including embossed and die cut areas and an intricate printed design requires significant trial and error.
Companies such as American Greetings and Hallmark provide on-line services wherein custom images such as photographs are merged with textual greetings and other graphical enhancements. These are subsequently printed and optionally assembled with previously manufactured components such as decorative frame surrounds. There is no integral service for embossing or otherwise physically enhancing the sheet material on which the designs are printed.
Companies such as American Stationary provide embossed stationary, their on-line design process uses standard templates for cards that include embossments such as scroll designs and allow a custom text string to be specified and embossed, or printed, to a predetermined location in the template. The location of the text string is predetermined, has a limited character length and has a preset form such as an initial and surname. The design process is limited to actions such as entering a text string within a text field and selecting colors for the sheet material from a drop down box within a computer based application. There is no provision for freeform positioning of physical enhancements such as the text string, adding graphical enhancements complimentary to the embossed areas such as fill colors and patterns, or incorporating imported graphical designs, photographs and the like within the overall design.
Commercial greeting cards having embossed areas with graphical enhancements and incorporating graphical images are available through retail outlets and are produced in high volumes as a result of the expense of tooling. Tooling for application of the physical enhancements is generally produced by developing a freeform graphical design and using it as a template for designing and developing and manufacturing the die plates from scratch as a distinct and separate process step. U.S. Pat. No. 4,579,708 to Rosart (1986) proposes a relatively cheap way of creating a design from a freeform image, but the process is intricate and requires specialized equipment.
In summary, there is no available systemic and integrated approach to the design and production of a custom design incorporating an image with physically and graphically enhanced regions desirably and coordinately placed on a sheet material. Prior art requires that for an embossing or die cut die be designed and built from scratch at a distinct process step, which is time consuming and costly.